


Barbara

by MorganaNK



Category: Inspector Lynley - All Media Types, Inspector Lynley Mysteries (TV)
Genre: F/M
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2016-06-29
Updated: 2016-06-29
Packaged: 2018-07-19 02:37:52
Rating: Mature
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 1
Words: 679
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/7341244
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/MorganaNK/pseuds/MorganaNK
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Tommy reflects on meeting Barbara and her subsequent impact on his life</p>
            </blockquote>





	Barbara

**Author's Note:**

> Property of Elizabeth George and the BBC... no copyright infringement intended... I'm just having a little fun with them and will put them back when I'm done.

When I was first partnered with Barbara Havers I decided that I was going to give her the benefit of the doubt. I had heard everything that people said about her; that she was rude, opinionated, difficult, touchy; the list went on and on. People also said things about me, things that I knew weren’t true. They said that I was playing at the job, that I didn’t take it seriously, that I had only made inspector because of who I was, because I was Lord Asherton. I didn’t pay much heed to other people’s opinions of me, I knew how unfair they could be. That is why I had to give Barbara a chance. I wanted to make up my own mind, weigh up the evidence so to speak.

When I first met Barbara Havers I wasn’t at my best. Deborah, the woman that I believed was the love of my life, was marrying my best friend Simon and I was in pieces. I was doing the whole ‘keep a stiff upper lip because you must not let your emotions show’; a lesson that I had learned at my mother’s knee, but inside my heart was dying. It turned out that Barbara wasn’t at her best either; trying to cope with two elderly parents who were both in bad health; who didn’t even seem to notice that she was alive, much less care. We were both damaged, attempting to hold together the shattered remnants of our lives while still trying to be functioning members of society.

Barbara may have been ‘Acton’ and I may have been ‘Eton’, and yes there were times when I would have happily had her transferred to the police force in Greenland if it meant I didn’t have to listen to one more sermon about the evils of the upper classes, but most of the time we made a good team. She had a keen mind, and she was far more intelligent than others gave her credit for. She challenged me, made me look at life in a different way. We complimented each other as much as we drove each other up the wall.

The first time she defended me I was stunned. I listened to her as she lied to Nies and I was convinced that my jaw must be on the floor. No one had ever stood up for me the way she did, even if the motive behind her actions had been because she thought I had overstepped professional bounds and that it would have a negative impact on her and her career. It touched me more than I could have imagined.

For every ‘flaw’ that Barbara had there was also a positive to balance it out. She may have been rude and outspoken, but she didn’t stab me in the back, she said what she thought to my face. She was also extremely loyal to me, she had my back and she made sure that I, and everyone else, knew it. Nies was just the first in a long line of people who experienced her wrath. 

I am under no illusion that the original idea behind paring us was to break us; to make one or other of us do something or say something that was unforgivable and then we would both be out of the Met. It has given us both a perverse delight to prove them so spectacularly wrong. Together we are almost invincible.

We have both been through so much. We have experienced things that should and probably would have destroyed us if we didn’t have the other to lean on and draw strength from. It is a given that we will always be there for each other, although it might be incomprehensible to anyone else. We balance each other and complement each other, even when we are fighting like cat and dog while hurling insults at each other. We may retreat to our respective corners to lick our wounds, but we will always find our way back to each other; that’s just the way it is.


End file.
